Grand Funk Railroad -- Texas Pop Festival -- 1969

Grand Funk Railroad’s historic appearance at the Texas International Pop Festival, August 31 1969. The 3-day festival took place on Labor Day Weekend, at the Dallas International Motor Speedway in Lewisville, TX, some 12 miles north of Dallas. Grand Funk played all 3 days for free and made quite a sensation, just like they did at the Atlata International Pop Festival two months earlier. Standing ovations of an estimated 150.000 in Texas had Grand Funk multi-encoring to the point Farner couldn’t even walk off stage! (common situation in later shows…)
Documentation of the festival was used by Bill Rogers on his 1969 movie “Got No Shoes Got No Blues” that was once shown in Dallas in 1976. Nowadays, this movie, along with 10 more hours worth of footage, is stored at the Historic Films selves waiting in the obscurity for somebody to make a move... A movie! Just like a group of intelligent people did with Festival Express! Ironically, the Railroad was absent from that 1970 Express... More ironically, absent they were from Woodstock (even if they had been asked to play) because, in Knight’s words, Mark was still recovering from some very bad beating a couple of weeks after the Atlanta triumph... That’s still questionable because GFR, despite Mark’s beating, played many dates during that period: Detroit (Eastown Theatre, July 25&26), Cincinnati (Eden Park, July 27), Los Angeles (Thee Experience, August 7-10), Buffalo (Erie County Fair, August 15?), Nashville (Music Fest, August 22) and Holly (Music Fest, August 28) among other promotional appearances for the group.
JT